Fletcher Flora - The First Golden Age of Mystery & Crime MEGAPACK™ - 26 Stories by Fletcher Flora

Jackie still couldn’t get mad. He said quietly, “So that’s one reason. What’s the other?”

Spud sat down wearily, staring at his fat belly. “I guess I might as well spell it out for you. It’s the only way you’ll ever get it. Because Jay Paley’s got her, tramp. That’s the only explanation. These things develop leaks always, and he’s learned of my double-cross. Or is it a triple-cross? It’s getting too damn complex to follow. Anyhow, you’ll hear from him pretty soon. Probably he’s been trying to contact you already. To the effect that Peg is his guest, I mean. Soon as you’ve lost the fight, he’ll send her home. Since you’re all messed up in a dirty fix, he won’t worry about you doing anything or going to the cops. You’ve got no call to worry, either, as far as that goes. All you’ve got to do is lose. There isn’t anything else you could do, even if you wanted, so you’ve got no worry.”

Looking down at Spud sitting there in the chair like an ugly little toad, Jackie was suddenly aware of the full significance of the deal with Ryan. The enormity of it swelled in his brain, assuming gigantic proportions.

“Wait a minute,” he said. “You promised I’d win. You made the guarantee to Rudy Ryan. If you don’t think I’ve got a chance, even trying, why would you do that? You know what happens to guys who cross Ryan.”

Spud’s eyes raised to Jackie’s face and dropped again. The bloat of his body seemed to deflate, withering and drying against worn velour.

“You wouldn’t understand. That’s something I couldn’t make simple enough. Now get the hell out of here. I’m tired, and I’m sick, and most of all I’m sick of the sight and sound and smell of you. I hope I drop dead before I ever see you or speak to you again.”

Jackie turned and went out. Downstairs in the shabby lobby, he consulted a telephone directory and found the address of the Pawnee Apartments. It was out on North-line Boulevard. A fancy street. People with money lived there. One of them was Jay Paley.

Outside, Jackie flagged a cab and gave the driver the Northline address. He sat sprawled in the back seat, still filled with the strange and purposeful calm that he’d acquired in the face of Spud’s invective. When the cab stopped in front of the massive stack of the apartment building, he got out and went in, wading through thick carpeting to the elevator bank. A kid in a red monkey suit was standing outside an empty car.

“Jay Paley’s apartment,” Jackie said.

The kid looked dubious, so Jackie dug a limp five out of his pocket and fingered it obviously.

“Fourteenth floor,” the kid said, “and I told you nothing.”

They went up to fourteen about one floor ahead of their stomachs, and the kid indicated a blond door down the hall. “That’s it,” he said.

Jackie went down and thumbed a button, hearing beyond the door the spaced musical vibrations of chimes. The door was opened by a man about Jackie’s size with a hard, pocked face. Without waiting for an invitation, Jackie stepped across the threshold with his left foot and brought the lethal right up from the rear. The pocked face didn’t even have time to look surprised. It just disappeared. The body below it lifted off the floor in a short arc and came down on its head and shoulders, making considerable noise.

Jackie stood with his legs spread, massaging the knuckles of his right hand, waiting for a reaction. Down the length of the room, a door burst open and Jay Paley appeared in pink silk underwear. His eyes took in the sprawled figure of the pocked subordinate and flashed up over Jackie, widening with apprehension. Spinning, he dove back through the open door. His legs, Jackie noticed, were thin and hairy, rather repulsive.

In his bedroom, Paley was frantically pawing in the top drawer of a chest. As Jackie drove toward him, he came up and around with a snub-nosed .38. But not soon enough. Jackie’s blunt fingers locked around the wrist behind the gun, snapping it aside and down. The wrist bone snapped like a rotten stick, and Paley screamed. It was a shrill, wavering scream of fear and rage and pain in equal parts. The .38 thudded on the floor, and Jackie transferred his grip from Paley’s wrist to Paley’s throat. With his other hand, he slashed down on Paley’s mouth, driving the scream back into the throat it came from, altering it to a wet blubber. He kept holding Paley like that, by the throat, slashing his face methodically with his free hand. Paley went on blubbering, mouthing incoherencies. His face acquired a sleek red sheen.

“Where’s Peg?” Jackie said. “What’ve you done with Peg?”

He let Paley sag to the floor, a hairy slug in pink silk. The body crumpled, folding up on itself, so Jackie straightened it with a kick in the ribs.

“Peg,” Jackie said. “Where’s Peg?”

Paley lifted an arm and let it fall, gesturing toward the door to the bathroom. The door was open, and Jackie could see through across tile to another door that was closed. The closed door had a key on the bathroom side. Bending over, Jackie got hold of Paley and hauled him up. He smashed a short right to the slack jaw and let the body drop again. Not for pleasure. Just to put Paley out of the way for sure. That done, he walked through the bathroom and unlocked the closed door.

Peg sat on the edge of a double bed, small and lovely and unhurt, her knees and ankles primly together. The glow of her pale hair was in her eyes, the way it always was when things were fine.

“I heard you out there,” she said. “I never dreamed you were so tough. How come you aren’t champ?”

Jackie felt as if someone had tied a knot in his heart. He went over and dropped to his knees in front of her, burying his face in her lap. “Peg,” he said. “Peg, Peg...”

She stroked his head, crooning a little, like a mother with a child. “I know,” she said. “You’re in a mess. I know all about it. But you’ll come clean, honey. You can give that louse out there his money back — the ten grand, I mean — and what he loses on the books is his tough luck. That we won’t worry about.”

She stroked his head a minute longer, and then said, “It’s all my fault, anyhow. Always whining for that lousy dump out on 66. I should have known I’d only get you confused. Come on, now, honey. You’ve got to get home to bed. There’s a fight to win tomorrow night.”

Taking the blame. Just as Spud had said she would.

Jackie stood up, grinning a little, pulling her after him. Tucking the bright head under his chin, he breathed the clean scent of it, wondering how any guy could be so lucky.

The blunt hand that had just done a good job on a couple of bad boys folded into a knot of hard knuckles behind her.

“Yeah, honey,” he said softly, “this one I’ll win. This one I’ll win for an ugly little bastard who loves my wife.”

And that, in the unreasonable way events sometimes have of going against the experts, is what happened. Jackie read the story of the fight aloud to Peg from page umpteen in the next morning’s paper.

Jay Paley, being a more important character, rated a bigger treatment. The story of how his bullet-riddled body was found in an alley on the east side of town was carried on page one.

Originally published in Verdict Detective Story Magazine #5 1955.

“Justice is blind,” it’s said, and so is vanity. This is the story of a man who learned it for himself.

His name was Charles Bruce, and early in the morning he got out of bed and padded into the bathroom. Even barefooted in pajamas he gave, somehow, the effect of almost frightening arrogance and vanity. His overdeveloped ego was apparent in the set of his polished blond head that was hardly tousled after a sleepless night. It lay exposed in the clean lines of a face that might have made him a matinee idol if he had possessed even the rudiments of acting ability. His vanity was, as a matter of fact, almost a disease. It approached narcissism. It was the kind of vanity that, when it has no particular talents to exploit, acquires in frustration a special evil. It is frequently found in criminals.